Although we have now moved beyond depictions of organizational identity (OI) as a stable anchor and unified entity in organizations, the potentially variable ways in which actors can use OI in organizational conflicts remains under-researched. This study explores the different ways in which OI is enacted by parties engaging in a conflict about misconduct in their organization. We draw on a case study of the Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA), where a dispute about managers’ proclaimed misconduct played out on multiple battlefields: rule compliance, morality, and competence. We show how the parties enacted conflicting views of OI (regulatory-centric and stakeholder-centric) in different ways (offensive and defensive) within these battlefields. Our conceptualization illuminates the multidimensionality of OI conflicts and the different ways in which OI can be enacted in explicit disagreements in organizations. This opens up important areas for future research on the various roles that OI can play in persistent and intractable conflicts.
